Diagnosing the immigration malady

The symptoms become clearer every day. Mexican flags, etc.

Let's assume the political implications of the national immigration, uh, "spat" will be significant in 2006 and 2008. I think if the national Republican leadership continue to straddle the fence on this issue, the Party will go the way of the Whigs. Anyone who thinks there is plenty of time for missteps and course corrections is overlooking the fact that this whole "democracy" shindig contains the seeds of its own demise: People who gain numerical majorities can vote to change the rules. Then, you can have enormous problems if you happen to not be a member of the majority group.

Like if you happen to want the American flag to fly, and you are outvoted. Or if you drive down your street and see people climbing in and out of windows and parking eight cars out front because there are eight families living inside. Then, the issue becomes a bit more immediate and the Republicans chortling about how they appreciate the illegals tending their fairways become a little less attractive on election day. (Memo to GOP leaders: Staying home on election day is easier than falling off a bike.)

But the well-documented symptoms of our national crisis are not the focus of this post. Rather, I wonder how we got to this point.

Obviously, decisions were made since the 1970s that loosened the gates. That's a key problem and a topic for another day.

Another problem is related less to policy than ideology: Why do they come here and want to fly Mexican flags?

Immigrants came to America in massive numbers from 1870 to 1920, and they learned to speak English and became ...Americans. They did not attempt to overthrow the existing culture and usurp sovereignty in favor of Ireland, Germany, Italy or Poland. They came to America because they were attracted to what it had to offer, and they wanted to be part of it.

Now, a large segment of immigrants seem to want something very different. There was a time when "reconquista" referred to the Spaniards' efforts from the 8th to the 15th centuries to repel the Islamic jihad from Spanish soil. The modern reconquista is aimed at America and it sympathizes with the jihad.

Americans thought they had it bad in the 1890s when the immigrants (my forebearers among them) talked and smelled funny, but that all worked out fine.

How did WE end up with this bunch of America-hating newcomers?

Short answer: We took our eye off the ball for about the past 20 years. We had bigger fish to fry, I guess - like the Soviet Union - than to care about our borders or immigration laws. Opportunistic people from south of the U.S. took advantage of our laxity.

Long answer: We quit caring about what "America" is. Peggy Noonan describes the essence of the problem:

It's the broad public knowledge, or intuition, in America, that we are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically. And if you don't do that, you'll lose it all.

We used to do it. We loved our country with full-throated love, we had no ambivalence. We had pride and appreciation. We were a free country. We communicated our pride and delight in this in a million ways--in our schools, our movies, our popular songs, our newspapers. It was just there, in the air. Immigrants breathed it in. That's how the last great wave of immigrants, the European wave of 1880-1920, was turned into a great wave of Americans.

Read all of it, friends. It's not all the immigrants' fault they haven't bought into the American concept. We who already live here have muddied the concept.

UPDATE: Virginia Centrist illustrates perfectly the difficulty in even discussing this issue: By pointing to a problem, you can get painted as a bigot by anyone with sufficient creativity to parrot the liberal party line. Personally, I don't care. If you just read the above post I think it should be pretty clear where I stand and that I don't have any ethnocentric ax to grind. The problem as I see it is not racial at all: It is cultural. But if you still think I'm a bigot, go ahead and knock yourself out. I definitely am an unapologetic conservative, which in most liberal circles means about the same thing.

What is a real shame is people like those who comprise the Minutemen and Help Save Herndon, who definitely are NOT bigots, are roundly painted as such by the liberal crowd and their parrot brigades in the mainstream media.

While there is sufficient sentiment in America right now to crack down on illegal immigration, because of the fact the "racism" banner is going to be unfurled in every instance by the pro-illegal propagandists, I predict it won't be until 2008 that the public begins to see through the false charge and any politician is able to successfully run on that issue.

Thanks VC, for the opportunity to clarify my argument. (My direct response to VC is below the fold)